Why Monkey with Your Brand?

Mathematician Émile Borel said a century ago, if you provided an infinite number of monkeys typewriters, eventually they'd produce Hamlet.

Today he might say, if you provided them smartphones, eventually they'd produce The Godfather.

Despite having limited time and money, marketers seem convinced amateurs can produce broadcast-quality videos.

Why do they monkey with their brands?

In his blog, Prathap Suthan, chief creative officer at agency Bang In The Middle, warns marketers of their folly.

"There are billions of sadly made films finding their way into the great social sewer. They comprise all kinds of trash. Including films made by big brands which they conveniently call web films. 

"Hello, your audience doesn’t realize the difference between a film made for the web versus television. For people, including all of us reading us, it’s a film. Most are badly made. Some are downright ugly. Very few are beautiful, and therefore shareable. 

"Now the thing is, take your eyes off quality and finesse, and you have a sad film representing your company, product, or brand. A social film has to be equivalent to a regular TV film. It’s not just a web film anymore. 

"Save yourself from the gutter and the clutter. Bad content is arsenic. It will eat your brand from inside."

Trust versus Trustiness

Word derivations say a lot.

The English word trust comes from the German word Trost, which means "comfort."

It's no secret marketers face a comfort deficit of Biblical proportions, as betrayal feels like the new normal.

Without warranties from their friends—and even with them—customers aren't comfortable doing business with us any more.

How, as a marketer, do you narrow the trust deficit? How do you build a comfort zone where customer engagement and conversation can begin?

Not by erecting a facade, a put-on Seth Godin calls trustiness. 

Four years ago, Godin said, "Building trust is expensive. You can call it an expense or an investment, or merely cut corners and work on trustiness instead."

Marketers who labor at building trustiness go for the cheap fix. Trust, on the other hand, takes time and money.

"Trust is built when no one is looking, when you think you have the option of cutting corners and when you find a loophole," Godin says. "Trustiness is what happens when you use trust as a PR tool."

While a minority, the Real McCoys are patently obvious, Godin says. They are "the people and institutions that will do what they say and say what they mean."

Godin points to the "perverse irony" in masquerading as trustworthy: "The more you work on your trustiness, the harder you fall once people discover that they were tricked."

What are you working on?

Swallow Your Pride

Why do we ask someone to eat "humble pie" when he overreaches?

The expression is a corruption of "umble pie," a tasty 13th century dish filled with spiced bits of animals' hearts, livers, kidneys and lungs. "Umble" derives from nomble, French for "deer innards."

The words "umble" and "humble" are in fact unrelated (the latter derives from the Latin word for "lowly"). But by the 19th century, "umble" had been dropped from the language and, because many Brits omit the spoken "h" at the beginning of words, the expression "umble pie" was mistakenly spelled "humble pie."  People assumed the mysterious dish had something to do with humility.

Chew on that.

How to Turn Your News Releases into News Stories

Media and presentation skills coach Edward Segal contributed today's post. He has placed stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times, and is author of Profit by Publicity.

The news release is one of the most important and effective ways to tell the media and the world about you or your organization, what you are doing, why you are doing it, when you are doing it, and how you are doing it. These one- to two-page documents should:

• Answer the all-important question of “who cares and why?” 

• Include the who, what, when, where, why and how of your story (whether it’s an announcement about the hiring of new employees, the opening of a new office, or an important award or recognition your company has received).

The best news releases are self-fulfilling prophecies: the more they are written as real news stories and sent to reporters who will be interested in them, the more likely it is that they will become news stories. 

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all, fill-in-the-blanks news release. Rather, you should think of your news release as a custom-made dress or suit that must be carefully tailored to tell your own story in the most effective and attention-getting way possible. Here are 11 steps for preparing your own tailor-made news release: 

1. Include your name, phone numbers and e-mail, social media and Web site information at the top of the first page. This will make it as easy as possible for reporters to contact you if have questions about the release or want to interview you.
 
2. If appropriate, place your announcement in the context of relevant trends or developments.
 
3. Organize the information as if it were a pyramid, with the most critical information at the top and the least important at the bottom.
 
4. Summarize the announcement with an attention-getting headline.

5. Write a succinct opening paragraph that summarizes your story or announcement.
 
6. Explain the impact your story or announcement will have on audiences of the news organizations that receive the release.
 
7. Insert a short quote (no more than 35-50 words) by from company official about the announcement. 

8. If appropriate, include a call for action.
 
9. Include relevant facts, figures and background information. 

10. If necessary, include a picture that illustrates the announcement, accompanied by a descriptive brief caption (also called a cut line).
 
11. To signify the end of the release, insert -30- or ### at the bottom on the last page of the release and center it on the page.
 
In addition to writing your releases as if they were newspaper stories, be sure to abide by the same rules for grammar and punctuation that reporters follow when they write their articles. Refer to the Associated Press Stylebook for guidance.

While it is certainly not standard practice, if the release is well-written and meets the criteria of a legitimate news story, sometimes a news organization will simply run the release, or use major excerpts from it, exactly as you gave it to them.

You Must Remember This

In a prized scene in Casablanca, the crooked cop Louis orders the patrons to leave Rick's Café Américain.

"How can you close me up? On what grounds?" Rick demands.

"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" Louis replies, and pockets his winnings without missing a beat.

Hey, Louis, would you be shocked to find that 96% of customers think marketers lack integrity? Only 4% think otherwise, according to the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

It's little wonder, when every ad, email, brochure or news release—like Louis—wants to "round up the usual suspects:"

Acme, the industry-leading provider of unique, customizable, feature-rich software, is proud to announce its dynamic new end-to-end solution designed for exceptional performance and total scalability for massive worldwide deployments with maximum flexibility in meeting today's most urgent business needs.

Marketers, take note: When your claims are more enticing than the customer experience, you jeopardize your integrity.

Why not stick with the facts?

You must remember this: a kiss is just a kiss.

Exorcize This

Few people know I played a bit part in the 1973 horror film The Exorcist.

It's true. I appear with two of the stars, Ellen Burstyn and Max von Sydow, in a wide shot that's on screen for a full three seconds.

Don't cover your eyes, because you'll miss me. Don't blink, either.

Want to know what's super-scary?

I'm always playing bit parts.

Edward Bernays used to warn students who were considering a career in marketing to think twice, because his was strictly a "sidelines job." 

Your sweat will go into glorifying others, Bernays warned. All of it. And that's as it should be. Marketers are paid to make non-marketers look good. 

But most social marketers have never heard of Bernays, nor heed his advice. They continue to break social marketing's Number 1 rule: It's not about you.

Get with the program, please. Quit striving for stardom. Get used to bit parts. It's about the glory of others.

As Geoffrey James puts it in Inc, "Stop talking about yourself. Stop thinking about yourself. Stop trying to be unique. Put yourself in service to the world. Figure out how to help other people."

It's the perfect time of year to exorcize your ego from your social marketing.

Bread and Circuses

For 25% of Americans, entertainment trumps accuracy in content, according to a new study by Adobe, The State of Content: Expectations on the Rise.

And the younger you are, the more entertainment counts, the study shows.

Entertainment is more important than accuracy for 10% of Boomers; 20% of Gen Xer's; 35% of Millennials.

In his new collection of essays, Notes on the Death of Culture, Nobel Prize winning novelist Mario Vargas Llosa laments the fact we've become puppets of “emotions and sensations triggered by an unusual and at times very brilliant bombardment of images that capture our attention, though they dull our sensibilities and intelligence due to their primary and transitory nature."

Our addiction to spectacle shows its worst side in politics, today a “mediocre and grubby activity that puts off the most honest and capable people and instead mainly recruits nonentities and rogues," he says.

Instead of leaders, we settle for clowns, ready to do anything to grab a moment of our attention.

Come as You Are

In the 1970s, hirsute posers—there were many—who showed up at sit-ins, rallies and music festivals were labeled "plastic hippies."

They'd take time off from their jobs, let down their hair, don their best tie-dye, pack a bong or a bottle of Boone's Farm, and make the scene.

People today are spared the need to package themselves in order to infiltrate happenings.

Brands are another matter.

To rate with Millennials, brands have to protest against global warming, epidemics, racism, homophobia, fat-shaming and unequal pay—or at least pretend to.

Henk Campher, San Francisco-based publicist and author of Creating a Sustainable Brand, calls the pretenders the "quick and dirty"—campers on the bottom steps of a "sustainable-brand pyramid" populated by:

• Snake oil sellers—hypocrites (Volkswagen, for example);

• Blah brands—big talkers (Apple); and 

• Offset brands—penitents (Starbucks).

Not surprisingly, 99.9% of companies, according to Campher, lack any sustainability gene.

But at least they're honest about it.

My advice to plastic hippies: Come to the party, but come as you are. The rest of us—your customers, employees and investors—prefer the real you.

All Hat, No Cattle

The world is filled with big, stupid companies.

When it comes to the customer experience, they're "all hat, no cattle."

A story to illustrate.

I encountered a bug in the software from one of today's top 10 providers. The bug is so serious, it prevents any use of the product. 

My first plea for help spawned this canned email:

Thank you for submitting your case. My name is Henjie from Support. I have taken ownership of your Case number 12483149. I understand that you need some assistance. I won't be able to call you. For now, I will need to have your case endorsed to a team to make sure that we will be able to assist you further with your concern. Thank you for choosing [name withheld].

Four weeks, hours of my time, and 31 comparably inane messages later, no remedial action has been taken.

Disney likes to say, "no employee ever 'owns the customer,' but one employee always 'owns the moment.'"

At stupid companies, employees own neither customers nor moments. The only "owners" are the legal ones, who spend all their moments minding the share price, while buzz-talking auto-responders are left minding the store.

Entrepreneurs can take heart.

Say It Ain't So, Joe

Warning: 70% of your content contains grammatical errors that could be harmful to your brand.

Software provider Acrolinx analyzed content on the websites of 340 global companies and found that 7 in 10 sentences evidence faulty grammar.

Acrolinx scored the content against "best practices for standard grammar" and determined the percentage of boo-boos per 1,000 words, Amy Gesenhues reports in Marketing Land.

Marketers in the US received the lowest scores worldwide; and, while they may not, some people care.

A survey conducted in 2013 by UK-based Global Lingo reported that 74% of customers spot faulty grammar on company websites; and that 59% wouldn't buy from a company that uses faulty grammar.

Say it ain't so!

Well, it is—and it gets worse.

Search engines, according to Bing's webmaster, won't display pages of content riddled with grammatical errors.

Lion One, Dentist Nothing

Will Minnesotans ever again want a torturer's hands in their mouths?

In an attempt at damage control, Big Bwana Walter Palmer, DDS, has emailed patients, crying for quarter.

In the three-paragraph email, Palmer confesses, "I don’t often talk about hunting with my patients because it can be a divisive and emotionally charged topic," but that "I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion."

Palmer acknowledges that protests and media coverage have ruffled his practice and concludes, "I apologize profoundly for this inconvenience and promise you that we will do our best to resume normal operations as soon as possible."

At the same time, Palmer has darkened his practice's Website and Facebook page.

Judging from his email. I think Palmer believes the hoopla is short lived, that our present obsession with a dead lion will soon revert to our customary obsession with cute kittens.

My guess: Big Bwana's got another thing coming!

Spotlighting the Skeptics

Can you be trusted with customers' data?

The answer depends on who you ask, according to a new study by Royal Mail MarketReach.

The firm asked 7,000 consumers in the UK whether they trusted marketers to use their data ethically, and protect it from thieves and hackers. 

Its findings show:

• Older people worry about potential data abuse more than younger people;

• Women are more reluctant to give marketers data, and want greater reassurance that their data will be safe, than men; and

• High-wage earners trust marketers with their data more than low-wage earners do.

Jumping the Shark

Well aware that most customers are "deletists," email marketers will swim any length to catch you.

Sometimes, too far.

A marketing automation provider recently sent me an email with the following subject line:

Don't open this message unless…

The "payoff" (a fairly insipid one) appeared in the body of the email:

You want to automate your marketing woes away!

Obviously, I took the bait.

But I ask: Why would a company that sells, of all things, email marketing services sink to such lows?

So be warned.

Avoid clickbait subject lines. 

Even if they increase opens, they'll take a bite out of your brand.

Big Brother is Watching You. But Not for Long.

Marketers' abuse of mobile data, long before it triggers government regulation, will destroy consumers' trust in many major brands, according to Thomas Husson, an analyst with Forrester.

"Mobility will change the nature of the data marketers can use and act upon," Husson writes. 

"Via sensors on wearables or smartphones, marketers will access data on our bodies and our whereabouts in real-time."

The almighty nature of mobile data, Husson believes, will tempt marketers to break consumers' anonymities—and their trust as well.

Marketers who think of privacy as just some "legal and compliance issue" are riding for a fall.

"Consumers are increasingly aware of the value of their data and expect brands to deliver clear benefits in exchange of the personal data they share," Husson says. 

"Moving forward, we believe consumers will increasingly take control of the brand relationship via mobile trusted agents. Brand trust will be built on mobile experiences. In fact, brands’ survival will depend on their ability to build trust."

Want to Boost Sales? Let Others Toot Your Horn.

Want to convince skeptical prospects of the value of your proposal? 

Get an intermediary to present your credentials first.

Persuasion research shows an introduction by a third party improves the odds your audience will buy your message far better than a self-introduction.

The third party need not be a trusted source.

Researcher Steve Martin examined the effect on sales of a third-party introduction. 

He arranged for a receptionist to introduce a real estate agent's credentials to first-time callers before connecting them to the agent, instead of simply putting callers through. 

The agent booked 20 percent more appointments as a result.

"Arranging for others to tout your expertise before you make your case can increase the likelihood of people paying attention and acting on your advice," according to Martin.

Civility. There's an App for That.

Worried friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter might think you're ill bred?

Your social media reputation is safe with a subscription to ThinkUp, according to Farhad Manjoo, columnist for The New York Times.

ThinkUp keeps tabs on your graceless behavior on those networks and points out, among other things, how often you refer to yourself, use profanities and ignore others.

The tracking service is designed "to make you act like less of a jerk online," says ThinkUp co-founder Gina Trapani.

A Lesson from LinkedIn

Cleveland headhunter Kelly Blazek made national headlines last week for flaming a jobseeker who contacted her through a LinkedIn group.

Blazek's victim didn't sit still for the abuse. She posted the headhunter's put-downs verbatim on several other Websites and they quickly went viral.

Blazek apologized for the breach of trust in a letter to The Plain Dealer. “In my harsh reply notes," she wrote, "I lost my perspective about how to help, and I also lost sight of kindness."

Blazek subsequently deleted all online traces of herself.

Ironically, only last year the headhunter was named "Communicator of the Year" by the Cleveland Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators.

We all can benefit from the advice of Florence Hartley, author of The Ladies' Book of Etiquette, published in Boston in 1860:

"Never write a letter carelessly. It may be addressed to your most intimate friend, or your nearest relative, but you can never be sure that the eye for which it is intended, will be the only one that sees it. I do not mean by this, that the epistle should be in a formal, studied style, but that it must be correct in its grammatical construction, properly punctuated, with every word spelt according to rule. Even in the most familiar epistles, observe the proper rules for composition; you would not in conversing, even with your own family, use incorrect grammar, or impertinent language; therefore avoid saying upon paper what you would not say with your tongue."

Trust Drives Customer Loyalty and Spending

Winning over the Empowered Consumer: Why Trust Matters, a recent white paper from IBM, concludes from a survey of 28,500 consumers that trust spells the difference between enjoying a loyal customer base and suffering a transient one.

Consumers come in three varieties, author Melissa Schaefer argues:

• Advocates, who like you, recommend you, buy more from you, and shun your competitors;
• Apathetics, who are largely indifferent toward you; and
• Antagonists, who dislike you.

The survey asked consumers about the degree of trust they placed in businesses and found direct correlation between trust and advocacy, and between trust and higher spending.

When you win customers' trust, you not only make them your advocates; you create a "cognitive monopoly" over them, Schaefer says. They have no thought of buying elsewhere.

Trust comes from communicating frequently and "re-humanizing" the experience of doing business with you, according to Schaefer. That's because customers crave recognition. "They want to be known, they want to be heard and they want to be valued," she says.

How to Calm an Angry Customer

Recently, I had my DNA analyzed and learned I'm related to Benjamin Franklin.

So I'll quote him.

“Never ruin an apology with an excuse.”

How can you make amends after disappointing a customer?

Sue Hershkowitz-Coore, author of Power Sales Writing, offers these five tips:

Plan to keep the customer's business. Before you write a word, determine your strategy for delighting the angry customer. Find an alternative solution to her problem.

Begin with a thank-you. Offering a thank-you makes the customer feel "safe and smart," according to Herskowitz-Coore. Writing, "Thank you for giving me a chance to explain the situation," helps disarm further criticism.

Validate the customer's viewpoint. Acknowledge that, from her shoes, the customer's right. "The words 'Your'e right' are magical when they're genuine."

Belay the apologies. Don't dive into the "We're so sorry" waters. An apology is robotic and doesn't soothe; a solution is sincere, and should.

Stay positive. "Explain what is possible, not what is impossible," advises Herskowitz-Coore. Find positive ways to express negatives. Tell your angry customer what you can do, not what you cannot do—and explain what's in it for them.

The Postman Always Rings Twice

I don't often hear from my life insurance carrier. 

The company silently sweeps the premium due every month from my bank account, while we go merrily about our separate ways.

I'm not sure I want to hear from the firm, to be frank.

But this week, I suddenly did.

The letter carrier brought a stately direct mail piece offering me a $400,000 accidental death and dismemberment policy.

It arrived one week to the day after the bombs blew up at the Boston Marathon.

Tchotchke peddlers began to cash in on the tragedy within 24 hours. 

An insurance company simply moves a bit slower.